Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Whew... the past few weeks have been kind of a whirlwind. My rugby season has started, I'm taking a studio lighting photography class, and I've been working on another project that I will tell you about soon! Anyway, I practiced some time management skills for this week's TWD and successfully baked up a Banana Cream Pie, the recipe chosen by our resident songbird, Amy of Sing For Your Supper :)

I don't remember ever having banana cream pie before, but I'm glad I made this recipe -- it was really delicious! I really liked the cinnamon and nutmeg in the custard, and I think it added a level of sophistication to the pie.

(Have you ever sifted brown sugar before?? Weird. I wonder if it actually made a difference!)

The main filling for this pie is a brown sugar custard with the aforementioned cinnamon and nutmeg, and I could really eat it all day. In fact, I think it would be amazing to churn it into ice cream with banana bits. Someone please do this and let me know how it is ;)

Making the custard:

My biggest challenge with this pie was the crust. I'd never really made a successful single-crust pie — the only other time I attempted it was for the Two-fer pie, and that was definitely not great-looking! (In that post, I blamed the shrinkage on the pie pan...HA!) My first attempt at the crust produced this:

Totally shrunken and burnt. (After I removed the too-dark parts, it did still taste great, though!) So, I broke out my copy of Baking Illustrated to see what I'd done wrong. My crust looked exactly like the "unattractive crust" picture in there ;) Apparently there were a few cardinal sins broken during the first go-round, including letting the dough get too warm and not rolling it out to a large enough size (should be 4" wider than the pie pan).

My second attempt was a whole lot more successful, and I even got fancy with a crimped crust ;) It still shrank a little bit, but looked a whole lot more like pie crust than before.

Once the crust was cool, it was time to fill the crust with goodness. Take bananas:

Cut into slices:

Layer with custard (3 layers custard, 2 layers bananas):

Then, when it looks like this:

Top with a delicious whipped cream/sour cream mix, and serve immediately :)

Yeeeeeeeee-ikes! Okay, so those numbers really ARE even worse than I thought they'd be. Oh well; this pie is totally worth it! Yours looks beautiful! (I had pie crust shrinkage too, but I did not try it a second time.)

I always refrigerate my crust (after I get it in the pan)for 30 minutes and then freeze it for 15 minutes before baking. I think it was Cook's Illustrated that I learned this from. The refrigeration period, if I remember correctly, helps prevent shrinking and the freezing improves flakiness by prolonging the fat from melting until the proteins in the flour have a chance to set. Your second crust looks beautiful despite a smidge of shrinking. I over baked my crust this time, but at least it didn't get to the burned stage.

Your pie looks wonderful! At least you attempted to make a pie crust, unlike me *ahem* Anyway, I knew this was fattening but didn't know THAT many calories. Oh well, I'm not the one who ate most of the pie haha